Gauri

She escaped the NICU on Monday (after spending 4 days in there), came to my hospital room on Monday, and we were discharged on Wednesday! We're home and are slowly settling in. The discharge day was especially rough...Hiranandani may be a nice hospital and the nursing staff is amazing and the doctors are pretty good, but they really don't pay any attention to infection control by keeping sick babies away from healthy babies: I was ordered to take her down from my nice clean hospital room to the OPD where we were surrounded by wailing children. I finally got to see the doctor, and when I was in the room with him, in came a baby with the viral flu! And all the doctor did down there was weigh her and pronounce her perfectly healthy.

The good news is that she is perfectly fine. The sucky bit is that I'm mildly ill, as is my father, but with different infections. I usually *never* fall ill, but given the stress of the first few days and the sleep deprivation (I also had horrible insomnia while being bone tired), I developed up a throat infection that has been slowly progressing. I was talking care of her while wearing a mask and suppressing my dry cough, but now that I'm bringing up phlegm every 15 mins, I've been barred from taking care of her.

She looks serene in the above shot (deleted), but this munchkin has a really mobile face...when she is awake she goes through a range of expressions that are amazingly comical. She smiles a lot in her sleep and while awake too...my favorite is the smile she gives just before she opens her mouth (like a shark) to attack that nipple.

I can't wait to get better, so I can be the one spending all day and night with her again, sans masks or worry.